How do I turn off autoplay of video content in Safari?

AdBlock does NOT work for sites that use forced Javascript etc to auto-play the videos.

William Donelson wrote:

AdBlock does NOT work for sites that use forced Javascript etc to auto-play the videos.

Have you read everything I wrote? You can see a screenshot I just took of Macworld.com below. No video player. Clean Safari 9 with Adblock Plus and my custom filter configured like I described in my previous post. Macworld does indeed use forced javascript to autoplay videos, that´s how I knew what to block out.

Here´s some more info on their filter functions.

And by the way; I do not work for, or have any kind of personal bonds/relation to Adblock or its creators, I just wanted to share this method with other users who were looking for the same thing 🙂

Best regards,

Andreas

I read everything you wrote. I just think it will block my own content.

Try your blocker with NBCnews.com website; it's the worst I have found for auto play videos.

For example this link about the pope

NBCnews

Firstly, it´s not "my blocker", but I see your point anyway. And you clearly said that ADBP does not work for sites with javascript autoplay, and that was the premise for my answer, now you´re just twisting it. I have no autoplay issues with NBCnews.com because I have blocked MP4 and SWF files from autoplaying in Adblock.

I have whitelisted sites that I trust and my own content/domains, so I have no problems with that.

Andreas

To block autoplay ads from MacWorld (and many other sites), use OpenDNS instead of your ISP domain name server, and blacklist brightcove.com

I found JS Blocker Safari extension has the solution for this problem. Although its a little complicate to configure and its not for free.

Actually it's Preferences>Security>Plug-in Settings. There I went to Adobe Flash and set CNN.com to "Ask" and it stopped autoplaying videos for me. Try that for other sites giving autoplay issues too. If it's not Flash, it should another of the plugins listed.

Me too for the most part it seems.

Something else to note: there is a trusted list you will see. And if you visit a site, and click "yes" to trust it to use Adobe Flash (usually a window appears asking), DON'T. If you do/have, you need to go to the settings mentioned above and either change the option for the particular site, or remove it. Then in the future, only click "never trust" if given the option. You can still click on videos to start them individually.

Building on others' posts, I think I've got it, though it works for blocking all videos.

Here's how it works for CNN: Install Adblock Plus. Go to Options (click on ABP icon in Safari toolbar), then the "Add your own filters" tab. add a filter "||i2.cdn.turner.com|/". All the videos appear to be loaded from turner.com, so this blocks them. Though it blocks them completely, even if you want to manually play them they're blocked.

For other sites, after installing Adblock plus, open a page with a bunch of their videos on it (on CNN there are a batch of video links with thumbnail images below the main, autoplaying, video for an article. Right-click on one of the thumbnails, left-click on "Block Element." On the "add filter" window that appears, select and copy the portion that seems to pertain to the videos. For NBC news, it appears to be "||media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video". Cancel the blocking, and go instead to Adblock options, Add your own filter tab. Paste the selection you just made and add a "|" to the end, and add the filter.

Again, this completely blocks all videos from the site so you can't play them at all without removing the Adblock filter.

Update to the above, which is no longer completely blocking CNN videos. Apparently I misunderstood AdBlock's syntax. The above filters worked for a while, but today are no longer blocking all videos.

So...instead of appending "|" to the end of each filter, append a "*" to the end of each line. So now I have two lines to block CNN autoplay videos:

||turner.com/*

||akamaihd.net/*

(Blocking only akamaihd.net blocks the video from displaying, but the audio still autoplays. Blocking only turner.com seems to be enough to stop both video and audio, but akamaihd.net appears to have something to do with CNN's mp4 for IOS, so I'm playing it safe by blocking both domains.)

I installed uBlock the ad blocker, so not only do I not get ads, but it allows me to block autoplay videos on CNN and ABCnews. Go to ublock.com.

I'm amazed at how much faster sites are with out ads or autoload videos!!!

I think this is our issue:

"The online video delivery platform Brightcove today announced new technology that defeats software that blocks video ads on desktop and mobile devices.

The anti-ad-blocking capability is part of Brightcove Lift, the company’s ad optimization solution, which helps companies maximize the revenues they see from video ads placed on the desktop and mobile.

Brightcove provides an HTML5 video player into which it serves its clients’ videos in the mobile or desktop browser, and serves the ads around them.

Brightcove said the technology “stitches” ads into video content streams in the cloud, making them harder to isolate and block. These continuous video streams also keep viewers watching by reducing buffering times between the video and the ads, Brightcove said."

http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/26/brightcoves-new-cloud-tech-hides-video-ads-fro m-ad-blockers/

Be aware that uBlock is no longer being updated. There is a separate fork of uBlock, called uBlock Origin, that is still active, but it does not support Safari. uBlock Origin does work on Firefox and Chrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock

RedneckBob wrote:

I installed uBlock the ad blocker, so not only do I not get ads, but it allows me to block autoplay videos on CNN and ABCnews. Go to ublock.com.

I'm amazed at how much faster sites are with out ads or autoload videos!!!

Be aware that uBlock is no longer being updated. There is a separate fork of uBlock, called uBlock Origin, that is still active, but it does not support Safari. uBlock Origin does work on Firefox and Chrome.

I'm not about to switch to an inferior browser just for the sake of a content blocker,

Both Adblock Plus and AdBlock (these are different extensions, from different developers) are available for Safari. And someone I know who knows a lot about Macs is still using uBlock without any problems. But there will likely become a time when uBlock won't work with an update to Safari, or will be less effective at ad blocking. Maybe by then uBlock Origin (which is by the original developer of uBlock) will have a Safari version.

freediverx01 wrote:

Be aware that uBlock is no longer being updated. There is a separate fork of uBlock, called uBlock Origin, that is still active, but it does not support Safari. uBlock Origin does work on Firefox and Chrome.

I'm not about to switch to an inferior browser just for the sake of a content blocker,